


seventeen days

by stellahibernis



Series: this is not how we fall in love [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Grief/Mourning, M/M, PTSD, SHIELD isn't too good for his mental well-being, Steve Has Issues, and then aliens from the sky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:01:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5032939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellahibernis/pseuds/stellahibernis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He sits up and the radio is still playing the game from 1941 and the room is wrong</i>.</p>
<p>Seventeen days of Steve's life, from 1945 to 2012. From the train until New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	seventeen days

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series but works as a stand alone, assumes familiarity of CATFA and the Avengers. Only difference is that they actually had on night in Paris (and then came the last mission and it all went wrong as we know).
> 
> I debated on whether to tag the relationship, since Bucky actually isn't around at all, but it felt right to do it, since it still is the biggest thing in Steve's life in this.

**Day Zero**

 

For most of his life Steve’s been plagued by ifs. If he was healthier. If he was stronger. If only he had a chance to do something more than just try and get by day after day.

Everything would be possible.

Then all of the ifs stopped being hypothetical, they became his reality. He was healthy and strong, and ultimately in a position to influence things on a grand scale.

And for a while everything _was_ possible.

For more than a year he and his team cheated death, made impossible possible. They walked into battle time after time and always walked out again. Sometimes they limped. But they walked out. He didn’t worry about danger. He was _conscious_ of it, and certainly planned for contingencies, tried to make sure that they had the best possible odds at making it. It’s just that they were constantly asked to perform miracles, miracles that were needed, and thus even best laid plans for his team were still risky.

They got away with it for a while. There were certainly close calls (“Almost doesn’t count,” he said to Bucky more than once), but somehow they did bring about miracles that were asked for. It’s a funny thing that happens to the brain in a situation like that. Even if one intellectually knows all the risks, knows that they almost died _again_ , knows how much luck was involved, somehow it becomes almost irrelevant. Like the odds for them are building one upon another. We got through this, we will surely get through that. That is the thought process.

Except it isn’t like that. At all.

Here he is, hanging on the debris at the side of a speeding train, reaching his hand for the most important person in his life. He’s taller, bigger, stronger, and still it’s not enough. Not this time.

That is the lesson reality has for him.

 

* * *

 

**Day One**

 

Later he has difficulty remembering the first day.

They don't sleep during the night; instead they make good time towards their own troops. They know HYDRA must already know something has happened to Zola, and all things considered, it's not that difficult to guess precisely what. Steve operates mostly on autopilot, keeping an eye on surroundings, making sure they are not followed. He doesn't spare a glance for their prisoner and leaves him in the care of Dum Dum and Monty.

Their transport is perfectly on time at the rendezvous point, every change happens smoothly, even the weather complies. They arrive at the base just before midnight and hand over Zola. He writes his report and then retreats to his quarters.

He stands in the middle of the room, in quiet that hasn’t been truly silent for him since the serum enhanced his hearing, but now all he can hear is his own breathing, ragged and uneven. For a split second there’s the bewildered thought, _I’m not supposed to be asthmatic anymore_. And of course he isn’t, and yet he can barely breathe for the constricting pain in his chest.

 

* * *

 

**Day Two**

 

Steve wakes up at midday, still in his uniform, and doesn’t remember going to sleep. His head feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton and he’s ravenous. He remembers feeling like this once before, after a grueling stretch of missions, when everyone had run on very little sleep and food, he himself on less than anyone, because he could take it. He hadn’t even noticed feeling unusual in any way, but after the mission was over and they were safely back at base he had collapsed and woken up next afternoon feeling the same as he does now. He’d learned then that pushing on meant he’d have to pay for it later.

Back at the time he’d also woken up in his bed, but his uniform had been taken off, he was covered with blankets and Bucky was dozing off in a chair next to the bed. Steve had been mad at the time, after all Bucky had been pushing hard as anyone, and didn’t have any supersoldier serum to help him. He should have been resting as well. And at the same time he’d felt warm all over, because even if everything had changed, even though he himself had changed so much (sometimes he thought both inside and out), some things had stayed the same.

Now he is alone in his room and the pain that had faded into a dull background ache comes back razor sharp. Now he knows they were operating on borrowed time ever since their team was formed, and the time to pay the debts has arrived.

He can’t stay in the room though, and he tidies himself up, straightening the uniform being a second nature by now, and opens the door to find Dum Dum sitting in a chair beside it. It’s a solidifying sight; it reminds him that he still has his team, and that there are still things he can do. Things that he has to do.

They get food and then go to a bar where the rest of their team is already on their way being well and drunk. That’s not in anyway unusual, nor is the somber mood. There have been many times they’ve come back from a mission and the team had decided to drink not to celebrate but to try and forget, to dull the pain and horror they had witnessed and caused. Now it’s a different kind of mood, all of them conscious of their missing friend, and all of them also very accommodating to Steve, trying to support him.

He is thankful, he truly is, but he’s not good at dealing with his grief in the company of other people, and soon he excuses himself. Back when his mother died he had wanted to do the same, to grieve alone, but Bucky hadn’t let him. Bucky had continuously made himself a part of Steve’s life, stayed even when everything else changed, and Steve had been glad to have him, to have the support that he couldn’t make himself ask for.

Now Bucky is gone, and even though Steve thinks the world of his team, they can’t fill the hole, or even get close enough to make it better.

***

He _knows_ he can’t get drunk because of the effects of the serum. They’ve tried a few times with the Commandos, and the only reaction ever was a slight buzz that faded away fast. He knows all this, and it still doesn’t stop him from trying. Again with the magical thinking; what if this time it doesn’t go like every other time. It’s the same as, _We’ll be okay because we made it every other day_.

He sits in the bombed out bar, half the bottle gone when the tears finally come. He doesn’t bother to try and check them, what would be the point? He just lets them flow, fills his glass again and drinks. None of it lessens the pain.

***

It’s later, he actually doesn’t know how much later, but he is somewhat more in control of himself when Peggy comes. It’s different from how she usually is, like she’s walking on eggshells, and he realises this is the first time he’s alone with her since Paris. Maybe it had been another instant of his magical thinking, but he hadn’t considered even afterwards the conflict of Bucky and Peggy in his heart. In a way there wasn’t a conflict, because he was fully capable of loving them both. On the other hand, there definitely was a conflict. With Peggy their relationship wasn’t even something confirmed, just the tentative references to waiting for the right partner, which he had been fully prepared to do. It had felt like a promise. One he’d failed to keep.

He has no illusions, though, he knows Bucky and Peggy didn’t really compete in the same level, because there are things he could and couldn’t have had with Bucky, and a lot more that he could have with Peggy, if both of them were willing. He just hadn’t even stopped and considered these things. He doesn’t know if it was for the eternal optimism of everything working out (as everything had for him ever since meeting Erskine), or if he’d subconsciously shied away from it, since there were some very ugly truths he’d have to admit to and accept about himself.

And now many of his choices had been taken away, there was no longer a conflict. Paris would be just a memory. Indeed things got solved without him having to do anything.

What she says to him doesn’t really help, because it’s not mutually exclusive for him to respect Bucky’s choice to protect him and feel guilty for being unable to return the favor on the most crucial moment. But it helps that she’s there, and that she does understand his pain and doesn’t want to belittle it, but won’t let him push her away either. It helps him to think forward again, and there is only one thing he wants to do. He wants to see HYDRA go down, just to end this stupid war forever.

 

* * *

 

**Day Three**

 

Steve rests but doesn’t sleep that night. He doesn’t really think about anything in particular, he’s thought enough about everything. He just let’s the hours drift by. At six in the morning there is a polite knock at his door and one of Colonel Phillips’ aides informs him there’s a briefing in an hour.

He stops to look at himself in the mirror. He looks green in it and he doesn’t know if it’s the glass or if he just looks as sick as he feels. It’s not physical sickness, it’s deeper and more unforgiving. And yet, there is also the same determination he had found the previous night. He looks himself in the eye, the way one usually doesn’t, because there isn’t really anyone one wants to connect to in there. But right now he needs to make a promise to himself he’ll do whatever it takes to end it once and for all.

He washes his face, gets dressed and makes sure his room is in perfect order. The last thing he does before stepping out is close his hand around the tags hanging around his neck; still unmatching and against regulation. And if he again makes the promise to end it, this time it’s not entirely for himself.

He isn’t at all surprised to hear that Zola had talked; it fits the impression he’d gotten from the moment Steve saw him flee from his lab where he kept Bucky prisoner. For a moment the anger flares again; he still doesn’t know exactly what happened to Bucky back in Austria, what Zola did exactly, but he knows it left marks. And now Zola certainly has some kind of a deal that’ll help him get away with far less than he’d deserve. Steve pushes the thought away. Anger isn’t going to help him now.

When he proposes his plan it’s not magical thinking. There is a risk, but this is a war; everything is a risk. And exactly because it’s not something that looks smart, that it is something that can easily be read as arrogance, it’ll be a way in. Red Skull will be more likely to not see that it’s not a rash act but a perfectly executed plan. The others are hesitant at first, but it doesn’t matter. Since the beginning of the war Steve’s been keeping his eye out, picked his battles, and now he knows exactly what he needs to say to get them on his side. It doesn’t take very long.

The troops are already being readied, and they will be able to move in a few hours. The timeframe is tight, it was another thing that made it easier for Steve to get his plan accepted. They don’t really have time for thorough recon, hence the deceptive arrogance is the way to go.

***

He returns to his room and changes into his field uniform. He checks to see everything is in working order, that all the straps still hold and that there are no fraying parts he’d need to repair. Then he packs all the rest of his belongings and goes to have a lunch with his team. Afterwards there’s still a little bit of time left, and maybe it’s a whim, maybe a desperate attempt to still hold on, but he opens the parcel that contains Bucky’s belongings. They’d been given to Steve when they came back to base, and he hadn’t touched them beyond setting them down in the corner of his room. Most of the things in there are familiar, that he’s seen day to day or even from before the war. Additional clothes, the few personal items. At the very bottom is a book, one that Steve remembers very well, even if he never read it. It was he who gave it to Bucky after all. It had been a newly released book at the time, and Bucky had smiled at the title, _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ , and slipped it into his bag. Steve hasn’t seen it since, but now that he takes it in his hand, it’s clear it’s been read. Again and again. He leafs through it and suddenly a letter falls from inside.

It suddenly feels like he’s snooping through Bucky’s belongings; to find a letter that was meant to be sent to someone, it’s too pristine to have made the trip through the mail. Steve idly wonders who Bucky had been writing to, and there’s a hint of an irrational stab of jealousy, but when he picks it up and turns it, he finds it’s addressed to him. It’s not closed.

It takes him a while to figure out the date on the letter is the day Bucky was shipped out. He reads through it fast the first time, mentally grabbing hold of every word. Then he reads it for the second time, slower, really savoring the meaning.

It’s not really familiar in that it doesn’t sound the way Bucky normally wrote. Bucky had always had a flair with words, coming from having read a lot, basically everything he got his hands on, ever since he was a child. This letter sounds like Bucky talking, and Steve can hear Bucky’s voice inside his head when reading it. The sentences run together, or stop and change direction or fade out, and Bucky hadn’t bothered correcting them. Maybe that’s why it was never sent. Or maybe, and Steve thinks this is the more likely reason, Bucky never sent it because it says too much. Maybe even more than Bucky realised it does. But here it is.

Steve repacks the parcel and sets it next to his belongings. The book goes back in but the letter he tucks into one of the pockets inside his uniform, the same one he usually keeps his compass in.

When they finally get on the way, he feels relief. Finally they are doing something instead of just waiting, and it’s a release of tension. He settles down and falls asleep. He’ll need all his strength the next day.

 

* * *

 

**Day Four**

 

The plan works.

The risky bit had been that the HYDRA soldiers might just kill him given half the chance, but they had wagered on having made it personal enough for Red Skull that he would have given orders for Steve to be taken prisoner if given a chance. Turns out they were right. He rises his hands and lets the soldiers take him in. While they walk him through the complex it strikes him this is the first time he’s ever given up a fight, except even now he isn’t giving up. It’s just a trick.

When Red Skull asks what made him so special, it’s a question he doesn’t really have an answer for, or more precisely, doesn’t have an answer that would satisfy someone like Red Skull. They are not at all alike in that. The memories flash across his mind; Erskine and meeting him, Peggy reassuring him, Colonel Phillips, his team, and finally Bucky and what he said when he agreed to fight this war with Steve. And for the first time in four days the thought of Bucky doesn’t feel like it’s crushing his chest. Instead he feels warm and reassured; Bucky’s resolve is even now backing him up. Steve smiles and tells his truth.

“Nothing. I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.”

***

It’s not easy, but Red Skull is finally beaten. For a moment Steve stands there, transfixed by what he saw. Stars and space the way he never imagined. He thinks Bucky probably did, reading all those stories he liked, about aliens and spaceships and different worlds. There was a different world right at the front of Steve’s eyes, and he thinks if he’d just stepped forward he could have gone there. But he didn’t, because there is still something for him to do.

He doesn’t have a formal training to fly a plane, but he has been a passenger enough times to understand the basics. The Valkyrie isn’t an ordinary plane though, and the steering functions have been damaged enough that he knows straight away there is only one way of stopping it.

He hails the command center, mostly to let them know that the danger is over and that it’ll be okay, that he is fine with his decision. It’s difficult when it turns out Peggy is there; it suddenly makes real everything he is going to lose when he points the nose down. There is desperation in her voice when she insists there must be something that can be done, and it catches a hold of Steve for a moment. _There must be a way out_ , he thinks. He then pushes that thought away, because there isn’t, is there? Only one way to stop the plane.

He points the nose down and holds on to the steering as it rattles in his hands, and he talks to Peggy about the dance they will never now have. It’s another promise he made that never gets fulfilled, and he thinks he never was as good at keeping his promises as he should have. It is regret, bitter and sharp that he feels now, thinking about the life he will miss.

And there is another side to it, one that he would never admit to if he somehow managed to make it out alive after all. There is a little strand of relief mixed with the regret; a relief that now he doesn’t have to find out whether he would be even a little bit unsatisfied in life with Peggy, thinking about all the things that might have been if only Bucky had lived. It would have been wrong towards Peggy, would have been wrong towards Bucky for that matter. And yet, it probably would have been true. Now as the icy wasteland fills his field of vision, he sincerely wishes Peggy finds the right partner and happiness after he is gone.

His last thought is that even though he didn’t take the invitation of the Tesseract to see another world, he will now step into one after all. And he wishes, most of all, that it will be the same one Bucky departed for only days earlier.

It is the only thing that matters anymore.

 

* * *

 

**Day Five**

 

Steve comes back to consciousness and for a moment he thinks he’s been taken back in time. There is a baseball match playing and he knows it, remembers it from 1941. What he feels then is an overwhelming relief. _I can do it all better this time_. Except he finishes waking up, becomes more aware of everything, and it’s not right. There isn’t the dull static of pain that he always used to notice first thing in the morning before it faded out into the background, mostly unnoticed just because it was always there. It isn’t there now, breath flows easily through his lungs, and he doesn’t need to open his eyes to know he is the somewhat familiar stranger that looked back from the mirror after he was given the serum.

And now there is a stab of pain, because he survived after all and he’ll have to live the rest of his life without his best friend. Without Bucky, who in truth was much more than that. Still is. Now there is also a dread of not knowing how long the rest of his life will be, if even crashing a plane into the Arctic Ocean doesn’t mean to him what it does to everyone else.

He sits up and the radio is still playing the game from 1941 and the room is wrong.

It would be hard to explain it; it’s small details mostly, he probably couldn’t even articulate all of them. There is the way the walls are built, the sounds of the city behind the window, the color of the light, even the smell of the air. It’s all slightly off and puts him on guard.

The woman that comes in is pretty and friendly enough, and Steve doesn’t sense that she wants him harm, but she is undeniably on the edge for some reason. Also it’s as clear as it is with the room that she isn’t what she pretends to be. Steve was never too well versed in women’s style, but he has eyes, and he has looked at Peggy a lot during the last year and half. This woman is close and yet not quite there. The fabrics seem odd to Steve’s eye, her tie is too large and her hair is flowing free, not carefully done like every professional woman he’s ever known.

The most logical conclusion is that he’s a prisoner of HYDRA, and that they are trying to put him at ease. It doesn’t all quite fit (which is why he carefully avoids hurting the group of soldiers the woman summons any more than he has to), but the priority is to get away, then he can figure out what is going on. Except what he sees when he’s out of the building is stranger than anything he’s ever experienced.

It is like a dream; the abundance of cars, the moving pictures on the walls, bright with color. It’s not hard at all to believe when he is told he’s been sleeping for seventy years; everything around him tells him this is the only possibility. It would explain the changes in everything, even the different smell in the air. He feels all the more cheated, because now it’s not just Bucky that is lost to him; it’s everything and everyone. Seventy years means everyone he ever knew is most likely dead. It means that even his New York is almost unrecognizable.

***

He doesn't talk on the way back, and neither does Nick Fury. Despite all the evidence of his senses he'd like to think this is some kind of a plot of HYDRA, or an illusion created by the Tesseract. He doesn't know if it could do that, but he still remembers the sky unlike anything he'd ever imagined, unlike anything in the astronomy books Bucky had occasionally brought home from the library. Yet he doesn’t believe it’s fake. Everything is too big, too vibrant, too weird to be a construct, and he knows for a fact the Tesseract disappeared into the ocean, fell through the floor of the plane. He knows because he's sure he didn't imagine the pain when talking to Peggy, or the almost guilty sense of relief at his last conscious seconds.

Turns out it’s almost evening, in April 2012. He turns the thought around in his head while having his dinner (mostly things that are somewhat familiar, apparently because the cook did their best to make it so). This is now his world, and he’ll have to learn to live in it, because there is no other choice, no way back for him. Maybe he can find a place for himself as a soldier, as he doesn’t think humanity has learned to not fight wars while he was gone. Certainly the presence of an organisation like SHIELD suggests that. He doesn’t ask though. There is time, and he just can’t muster the will to be interested in this new age.

He’s given a room, one that doesn’t pretend it exists in the forties, and he is relieved. It’s easier to be in completely new surroundings. The woman he saw first shows him in and introduces herself as Agent Van Pelt. She gives him a small box, saying that it contains his private property, or what survived being frozen for almost seventy years.

He only opens the box when he is alone, and isn’t surprised to see there are only two items. There is the compass, and when he opens it Peggy is still smiling at him. The paper has aged, but apparently the case was tight enough to not leak. The second item is his tags, no longer perfectly shiny, there are specks of rust in them, but they can be cleaned. They are the same as they were ever since that night after Austria. Still against all regulations, still bearing two different names. He doesn’t know whether they are still as dangerous as they used to be; and for a moment wonders how many people know of them. He finds he doesn’t care, not really. If people want to talk they can do so, and he’ll deal with it if he has to.

There is no trace of the letter he’d carefully folded into his pocket, but it’s okay. He remembers every word.

 

* * *

 

**Day Six**

 

He sleeps only for a few hours and spends the rest of the night sitting at the window, looking at the city gradually waking up. As it gets lighter, there are more cars on the streets, and he starts seeing people walking about. He’s very high up, so he can’t really see that many details, but one thing that he notices is a lot of people have some kind of a small device that glows in their hand. He makes a note to ask about it. The day before no one really talked to him about things that had changed, but now he does feel mild curiosity. He looks out again, idly shifting his tags in his hands, and suddenly remembers Howard Stark’s flying car. It’s clear that those haven’t become a part of everyday travelling unlike Stark’s promise at the expo.

“You’d be disappointed at the future,” he whispers into air and tucks the tags back inside his pocket. He doesn’t wear them anymore, it doesn’t feel right somehow, but he knows he will carry them with him probably for the rest of his life.

***

In the morning they do all kinds of physical tests for him; partly to see that he’s fine after being frozen, and to provide a baseline on his abilities. They hook him up in wires and are at first very careful of not spooking him with all the technology until he points out that their setup isn’t really all that different from what Howard Stark had for Project Rebirth. Obviously then there were more levers and wheels instead of screens one can touch, but it was still something completely out of his experience. And then he went on to fight Nazis with weapons straight out of science fiction books. He’s way past getting surprised by technology (privately he suspect it’s more likely he’ll be surprised by something they cannot do here in the future than things they can).

The tests aren’t all that conclusive for the SHIELD scientists, just because their setup isn’t really enough to push him. Their machinery can’t handle the speeds he’d be able to run at full tilt, so it’s mostly just leisurely jogging for him, no problem at all holding conversation. And he takes one look at the rig they have to test the strength of his punch, and goes at about quarter of what he could do. It barely holds up, and the group collectively decide they need to design more sturdy testing equipment.

He does get them to talk about the results they are able to get, and the steps taken in modern medicine are very impressive. They are now able to explain to him more precisely why some things with him work differently from before, about cell regeneration and energy consumption among other things. They can’t find anything wrong with him, apparently he’s in perfect health after the freezing process which a normal human being wouldn’t be able to survive they tell him. It is fascinating, and also reassuring, to know that now he can actually get answers as to why some things happen with him differently instead of just having to hope it won’t be a problem.

There are agents with him constantly, apparently just observing him, and he feels like he’s on the USO tour once again. Not the performing part but everything else, where the organisers just made sure there was always someone with him, keeping an eye on him. To see how he performed, not to the audience but in general. It makes his skin crawl, but there isn’t that much he can do about it.

They seem to notice he takes to technology somewhat easily, and start demonstrating things. Televisions and phones and computers aren’t that weird, there is a logical procession to them that he can understand. The internet on the other hand is something completely different from what he could have predicted, but even that isn’t really hard to understand as a concept. He’s given a computer and shown how to search for things, some news archives as well as some sites that function pretty much as an encyclopedia (there is an article on him that manages to have misinformation in the very first paragraph) and another full of films, or videos as they are called.

It’s later when he has hopped from one to another for a while and somehow ended up from World War II propaganda films to videos of baby cats (which are adorable, he has to admit), he finally admits to himself that it is really weird.

He bookmarks one video that is only twelve seconds long, silent black and white bit of him and the Howling Commandos and then goes to sleep.

 

* * *

 

**Day Seven**

 

When Steve asks about everyone he knew, he doesn’t get stories. He gets a stack of files instead.

It’s all on paper, some of them decades old, others newer. Most of it is just as he had anticipated. Deceased, deceased, deceased. The same red word stamped on the files of every one of the Howling Commandos. He reads them through and there is their service record, medals, honorable discharges, retirements. There is some personal information, but it’s all the barest of bones. He takes a side trip to his computer, and finds there’s a lot more on the internet, but some of the information seems dodgy. He notes down several book titles to look up.

Howard Stark is also dead, and Steve isn’t even that surprised it happened by a car accident. Howard was always dedicated, but also erratic and a risk taker. Not to mention there were signs that if alcohol wasn’t a problem quite yet, it would become one. He’d seen it countless times in his youth.

He’s more surprised that Stark actually had gone and married someone, and had a child too. There is another file on Tony Stark, and the flying armor that’s nicknamed Iron Man. There is page after page information about school and grades, about the company he’d taken over from his father. It paints a picture of genius and transgressions, but not of a person. Steve stops reading because he can’t stop painting these new details on top of his former friend, and if he is ever to meet the younger Stark, it wouldn’t be fair to have constructed an image based on this alone.

On Peggy’s file the red word is retired instead of deceased. There is her service record same as on everyone else’s, and Steve is proud to see the title Director of SHIELD that she held for decades, and it makes him a little more at ease. He’s within an organisation that she played a big part in creating. The file also says she was married three times. He doesn’t quite know what to make of it.

There is also a phone number, and there is a phone in his room. He doesn’t make the call.

By chance, because he doesn’t think the people that gave them to him would think to do so, Bucky’s file is at the bottom of the pile. It’s the only one he doesn’t read. He doesn’t have to, he knows everything already. Anything he doesn’t know wouldn’t have ended up on any file, because if Bucky managed to hide something from Steve, the others definitely didn’t know either.

He spends a long while staring at Bucky’s picture on the first page, and the red stamped words. _Missing in action_. They hit him right at the chest and it’s hard to breathe again. He knows the procedure; the army is very unwilling to declare anyone dead unless there is inconclusive proof, and in Bucky’s case his body was never recovered. Earlier, while looking for information on the rest of his team he’d stumbled upon the fact that while Howard Stark had looked for him and the plane, the Howling Commandos had gone back to the ravine to look for Bucky. They never found anything.

Knowing doesn’t change the fact that the red words feel like accusation. _You should have gone back. You should have brought him home. You should have been the one to fall_. Knowing that he had a mission or that the ravine was so deep that falling wouldn’t have been survivable doesn’t help at all.

 

* * *

 

**Day Eight**

 

There is another session of physical testing, and this time there are a few tests that are at least somewhat challenging. Afterwards people come to tell him about the future (or perhaps he should just start calling it the present). There is some history, something more about technology and such. He’s actually the most interested in how society has evolved in the decades he’s been gone, and the things he hears sound better than he remembers. Partly anyway. It’s patchy, because there is no time to talk about everything, and he finds he lacks so much context that it’s difficult to even come up with the questions for the answers he wants.

He asks about the history of SHIELD, and gets a more linear story. A lot of it he sees as a logical continuation, how it grew from the SSR during the war, but there are some things that sound odd to him. Some things they do now that don’t sit quite right with him, but that the people speaking to him take as perfectly normal, such as their spying activities, international work and surveillance. He refrains from commenting on them. Again, he knows he lacks context, and maybe knowing all the history they would make more sense.

Part of him thinks that regardless of context the things should feel wrong to him. He wonders how exactly it happened that they don’t to most people.

Peggy is a constant figure in the history of SHIELD, as she should be, and he can tell everyone who ever worked under her has a huge respect for her. And still, there is a remark, “Never know what people are capable of, eh?” that makes him bristle.

He says, rather pointedly, that he always knew what Peggy was capable of, and that during the war she wasn’t allowed to reach her full potential just because of her gender.

He’s starting to realise that everyone he meets has at least some kind of idea of him from beforehand, and it shouldn’t really be a surprise after he’s seen the amount of writing that has been done on him and his team. Not to mention films and documentaries. It’s just that what people think doesn’t seem to be very accurate, and he feels like he’s constantly fighting against this, having to first break through the expectations and then show them what he really is like. It’s exhausting, and often he doesn’t even bother.

***

That night, when he mentions that he doesn’t really want to live at SHIELD, regardless of whether he comes in regularly, he is offered a few choices. There are apartments in the city that SHIELD owns and he can stay in while looking for a place of his own (it also turns out he has nearly seven decades worth of back pay from the army which with interest is quite an impressive sum, even taking into account the inflation). He accepts this, and they arrange for him to move the next day.

One of the suggestions had been for him to go and stay in a cabin in the woods that SHIELD has, so that he could gather his thoughts in the quiet. He’d almost laughed at the suggestion, and reminded them that the only time he’s ever spent in any kind of woods was during the war, and back then even if it was quiet everyone was still on the edge. Meaning the woods really isn’t a place he’s likely to find relaxing. New York is his home, regardless of how much things have changed.

 

* * *

 

**Day Nine**

 

He’s breathing hard and doesn’t even remember what the dream was all about, it’s already dissolved in the darkness. The noises linger at the periphery of his consciousness; the all too familiar battleground sounds. Even lighting the bedside lamp doesn’t really help. For a moment he paces to and fro in his room, and then it becomes too small, too claustrophobic, and he throws on the exercise clothes and shoes he was provided for all the tests and heads out. He’s relieved that no one stops him or even tries to talk to him.

On the street he takes off running, fast as he can. He knows it must attract attention because he’s running faster than a human being should be able to, or it would attract attention if there was anyone around. It’s early enough that even New York is mostly empty, and the few people that he sees don’t seem to pay attention. There is a car that stays close to him right after he steps out, but it soon gets left behind because at his speed a car even accounting for the empty streets can’t really keep up in the city. He isn’t particularly surprised that SHIELD would have someone following him, but he has no interest in making it easy for them.

At first he doesn’t really care where he’s going, he’s just running and it helps, the effects of the nightmare lessen. After a while he notices he’s been gradually making his way towards east, and he crosses the bridge over to Brooklyn. He doesn’t really look at his surroundings, doesn’t keep a mental track on what’s new and what’s familiar, just continues towards east.

The sun breaks above horizon just when he comes to the shore, and he stands there just looking over the sea. It’s calming, the first time he feels like that on this new century.

The sun is fully above the horizon when he turns back, this time at a leisurely pace, which is still fast for regular human beings, but not so fast it’ll attract attention now that there are more people around. Right after he crosses the bridge back to Manhattan a car stops next to him, and the agent on the right seat asks if he wants a ride back for the rest of the way. He accepts, since the need to run and get away from closed places has passed. He gets in and the agent hands him a coffee.

***

After lunch he’s taken to the apartment he’s to stay in. It’s fully furnished but plain; only containing necessities. He hasn’t accumulated that many things, but there is an additional box of things he’s left with. When he opens it, it’s like being taken back decades, because there are the few personal things he had packed up before leaving for the last mission, both his things and Bucky’s. He stares into the box for a long while, and then closes it back up.

Walking around the apartment he finds he’s in a way missing Bucky more than he has yet after waking up. There have been moments when the pain losing him, and everyone else as well, has been nearly unbearable, but this is different. It’s not as much a sharp sense of loss but a dull ache of just missing. He thinks it comes now because the apartment is a place close to something he used to know, even if there are modern appliances and things they never used to have. Still, it’s a place to live in, and before the war he used to share an apartment with Bucky.

Here more than ever it feels like there is a hole in the air shaped like his best friend, the most important person in his life, and there is nothing Steve can do to change it. In a way he doesn’t want to either.

After dark he sits at the open window, like they often used to do on warm spring nights like this, and idly follows a couple walking down below. He knows exactly what Bucky would say, but the shape of the words isn’t right in his head. He realises he’s already unsure of how Bucky’s voice sounded like, and the dull ache gives way to sharp pain.

 

* * *

 

**Day Ten**

 

It rained every day on their last leave in Paris, the icy rain you get when the weather doesn’t quite know whether it wants to be winter or spring. The last morning Steve woke up warm and content, and didn’t bother opening his eyes in a long while. He’d just listened to the droplets hitting the windows, concentrated on Bucky’s restless fingers drawing patterns on his skin.

It’s raining again as he wakes up into the grey light of morning. He has barely time to register that something isn’t quite right before the world aligns and he realises what happened. For a second, just after he woke up he thought he was still in Paris in 1945. Somehow he had forgotten everything that happened after. The reality settles upon him like a too heavy blanket, suffocating, and he’s changed into his running gear before he even has time to think about it.

This time the running doesn’t help, nothing helps really. It feels like he’s wading in water, but it’s just his memories, and there is no dry ground anywhere in sight. He makes breakfast, gets groceries from the corner store, opens the computer and closes it because he can’t think of anything interesting enough to look up.

The rain doesn’t let up.

 

* * *

 

**Day Eleven**

 

He wakes up the same time as every morning and can’t summon energy to get out of bed. There seems to be no point.

The sunset colors the wall by the bed pink and orange.

 

* * *

 

**Day Twelve**

 

Right after he finishes breakfast the next morning one of the young agents he’s been talking to on and off since waking up rings his doorbell and volunteers to show Steve around the neighborhood. There really isn’t anything better for Steve to do, so he agrees. They walk for a while and discuss changes in the city, as Jim (Agent James Conway, who wants to go by his nickname, a detail Steve is glad about) has lived in New York all his life.

They end up at a small cafe a little out of the way, and Jim shifts the conversation towards Steve, about how he’s adjusting and doing in general. Steve isn’t too keen on talking about himself, as there are things he really isn’t comfortable about sharing with someone he just met and really doesn’t even know at all. Not to mention the fact that they are a part of an intelligence organisation and have in their previous interactions been tasked with watching over Steve. And it’s not hard to see why Jim would be chosen to talk to him; they are about the same age, both from New York and Jim is talkative and easy going enough to put people off guard. Jim also isn’t too difficult to steer away from topics Steve wants to avoid; he gives a few vague answers and then shifts the discussion towards something else that is new and different to him.

***

It rains again in the afternoon, and after hesitating a bit Steve takes out the files and reads them through again. He watches all the films he can find featuring him and the Commandos. When he finally stops it’s dark outside and he doesn’t really know what he was looking for, just that he didn’t find it.

 

* * *

 

**Day Thirteen**

 

At SHIELD Steve has an appointment with a woman who introduces herself as Doctorr Calderon. They settle in her room and she proceeds to explain him that whatever they talk about she can’t reveal to anyone unless he specifically allows it, even though she is employed by SHIELD. Of course he knows what this is about, they want him to talk to someone, and now they’ve decided on a professional. At least it seems someone has figured out he hasn’t got a problem with women, as it had seemed many people apparently thought he would, even though everyone was familiar with his relationship with Peggy and knew how her career had progressed. He can’t also help thinking that they might think he’d see a woman as less threatening and would open up because of it.

It’s the same thing all the time with SHIELD. His instincts say nothing is as simple as it seems at a glance, as if everything has layers, and Steve finds it difficult trying to gain a foothold in this new century. The fact that everyone seems to have a very clear idea of him before hand doesn’t really help either.

Talking to Doctor Calderon he doesn’t get the feeling that he is being pushed into a mold that he doesn’t actually fit in, but he can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t have that many expectations (or that she can push aside the ones she does have), or because she’s just better at concealing them. She asks questions on how he’s been settling in and lets him talk and listens instead of just guessing, and he tentatively marks her as at least willing to find out whether he fits what she previously has thought. Which is why he tells her exactly that, how it is frustrating to have to fight preconceptions all the time.

They talk for about an hour, not really getting into things that are still sore for Steve, and he isn’t exactly sure how it’s supposed to help (and who), but at least here was an hour spent without getting frustrated at the person he was with. It has been a rare occurrence recently for him.

***

He’s offered a ride back to his apartment but he chooses to walk instead and heads out, not even in the right direction. Only when he’s standing at the base of Stark Tower he realises he wasn’t just wandering. He sits down at the cafe and the waitress talks about Iron Man, and frankly Steve doesn’t know whether he wants to see Stark, in his armor or otherwise. He’s been thinking that it would be odd to meet the descendants of the people he used to know, and especially knowing that Tony Stark clearly had a complicated relationship with his father, Steve’s not too keen on meeting him. Howard was his friend, and he isn’t really ready to be confronted with the reality of what came after he crashed the plane, he can admit it to himself now.

It is quite obvious that SHIELD has some sort of plan that involves both Steve and Stark. He knows it wasn’t an accident that in addition to the people he knew he’d also received the file on the younger Stark. Clearly someone thought it was important that he’d find out about him and not just what one could dig from the internet, also the official files on him, including his imprisonment in Afghanistan and how the arc-reactor in his chest had nearly killed him. Perhaps it’s meant to create feeling of sympathy in him, but for what end, he just doesn’t know.

And it’s not hard to admit it rankles him that no one comes forward and tells him.

 

* * *

 

**Day Fourteen**

He takes a run in the morning again, as has become a habit, but it doesn’t really dissipate the nervous energy he has. He thinks he dreamed again, but doesn’t remember what about. He feels antsy all day long and in the afternoon looks up boxing gyms on the internet. It is still odd to him how seemingly all information is just a few clicks away (if you can come up with the correct search term, he’s had some results he really did not expect), but he’s at least starting to adjust enough that he remembers it’s true. He picks one that seems to be a little old fashioned and out of the way, throws his training gear into a bag and leaves for the train.

Of course he could go to SHIELD, they have all the latest facilities after all, but in there he feels like he’s always under scrutiny, being evaluated, and today it’s the furthest thing he needs. Thus another place.

He arrives near the closing time, but it’s not at all a problem to keep the space open for him. He begins wrapping his hands while the last stragglers make their way out, and it’s kind of a ritual that puts him in a more focused frame of mind. Pulling on his uniform had always had the same effect, although it didn’t really stay with him all the time when he went weeks on end wearing it. It’s a centered calm that comes over him, and for a while it’s the only thing he feels while he works on the bag.

It doesn’t last long this time, the memories start to leak in, the sounds, the flashes of light, remembered voices. He’s dimly aware that he’s hitting the bag too hard but doesn’t stop, doesn’t even restrain himself.

The bag is sent flying to the other side of the room, and for a while he just stares at it. He doesn’t feel better or even less on the edge, the nervous energy is still there when he hangs up another bag and tries to focus on the force connecting it.

He isn’t particularly surprised when Fury turns up. He’s not so naive to think that SHIELD isn’t keeping an eye on him and his whereabouts, they probably have technology that he can’t even imagine doing the trick for them, and for a moment the unease threatens to be overwhelming. He forces it back down and continues hitting the bag, carefully restricting the force. This is not the time for it, because Fury wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. It’s not even a lie when he says he’s had enough of sleep for a while. These days he dreads sleeping and the dreams it might bring, and he doesn’t remember the last time he woke up feeling refreshed.

Well, no. That’s not exactly true. He knows exactly when it happened; in the middle of a night up the side of a mountain, when Bucky was on watch and he didn’t want to sleep any more than absolutely necessary, because he didn’t want to miss a second. Back then he had been full of energy, full of hope. Full of life. He knows it happened. He just can’t remember how it felt like anymore.

He doesn’t laugh when Fury tells him he should be celebrating, because the laugh would be bitter and harsh, but there is a part of him that recognises it as funny. And the thing is, he woke up, he was told the war was won, shown all kinds of examples of how things are better and maybe Captain America should be celebrating. It’s not that things are perfect, he can tell even though the things SHIELD agents tell him are somewhat dressed. He can see it in the city that there’s still poverty and inequality, but many things are better, many things he believed in and thought Captain America should stand for.

But he doesn’t feel that much like Captain America here and now, just Steve Rogers, who two short weeks ago lost the most important person to him and a few days later everyone and everything else that ever mattered. He even feels like he’s lost Captain America, because even when he was gone, the image continued existing in other people’s minds, in stories, in propaganda. Now it feels like it means something to everyone, but those things aren’t always that close to what Steve always thought Captain America should stand for. There really doesn’t seem to be that much reason to celebrate.

It’s such an unexpected comment from Fury, that for a split second Steve is confused. _Does he really not get it?_ But no, that isn’t it at all, he then realises. Even if he hasn’t seen that much of Fury, Steve knows he’s smart and observant, and even if he probably doesn’t fully know Steve yet, it doesn’t mean Fury is that out of touch. Steve had seen that the moment they were eye to eye Fury had understood exactly why putting him in a fake recovery room had been a mistake, and a man like that doesn’t say things like he just did without purpose.

And it’s not difficult to see the purpose behind Fury’s words. It’s been obvious to Steve that SHIELD has something planned for him, some kind of a role that has something to do with the younger Stark, and it’s not difficult to make the leap for it to include him being Captain America. Perhaps it is Captain America, not Steve Rogers that Fury needs, and thus, the master manipulator that Steve suspects he is, he pushes Steve into those kinds of thought patterns. Suggests things to him where he gets closer to being the hero, the infallible icon, instead of a man who feels like he is just a step away from breaking apart.

Steve sees all this, and he still lets it happen, lets himself fall back into the role. Asks if there is a mission. _Because what else is there?_

Fury hands him the file, and whatever he was expecting it wasn’t this. Right there on top of the pile is the blue cube, the source of Red Skull’s power. The reason he is here. He’s angry, but not in a way that’s familiar. His anger up until now has been hot and sudden, made him want to punch things, made him want to do better, to be more. This cold rage that builds up is new and he doesn’t know how to handle it. It doesn’t make him want to make things better, instead it makes him want to throw the file down and walk away. It doesn’t matter that Fury says it could be used for good; it’s all the same to him. Instead Steve makes himself ask about what happened, how it was taken, because that’s the only explanation he can think of. The Tesseract being in the wrong hands would be a situation affecting the whole world. Again millions of lives are at stake, and now Steve feels tendrils of the familiar hot anger.

_ This never should have happened. _

He walks away, knowing he will step up and take the role Fury is offering, and it feels like he is back to where he started, fighting the same war against blue death. And he leaves, because he suspects that if he stays he ends up punching Fury, and he doesn’t want to do that since he really doesn’t know if it would be the right course of action. Probably not. He does, however, tell Fury that it never should have been brought up from the ocean, no matter the potential benefits. That’s the one thing he knows crystal clear.

 

* * *

 

**Day Fifteen**

 

There is indeed a briefing packet at the apartment just as Fury had promised, it sits on the table with no one at sight and makes Steve grit his teeth. It’s a reminder that everything here that he has is connected to SHIELD; and more than that, really is part of SHIELD. He knows it has started to bother him bit by bit, and today it finally just irritates him. There is still that little voice in him fuelled by the cold rage that is not gone, just pushed aside for now (and Steve knows very well it will rise to top again at some point), that says he should just give up, walk away, to let SHIELD sort out the problem for themselves. What does he care?

And that’s the key, isn’t it? He really doesn’t know if there is anything here in the future that matters to him, not when he compares it to the past he has lost. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe he’ll forever feel displaced in time. He turns on the tablet and checks the digital archive, flips through the pictures, not really paying attention until he comes to one of himself, grainy black and white, but one of the few images of him in actual combat instead of a staged scene.

Earlier he’d thought that even Captain America was lost to him, since the story had taken off on its own without him, and had over time become warped, but now he thinks it doesn’t have to be that way. Not if he won’t let it. He hasn’t changed that much, there are still things he believes Captain America should stand for. He still believes Captain America should fight to save the world when it’s in danger. And even if it doesn’t mean the same things it did before, he is still Captain America.

A few hours later there is a call that they are ready to take him to the carrier ship, and he throws his jacket on and leaves without a moment’s hesitation. Parked by the door is one of SHIELD’s large black cars, and the agent who meets him isn’t familiar. He introduces himself as Coulson, and for all the world he appears soft spoken and even harmless, but Steve senses there is steel in him.

There’s another person in the car, a redheaded woman Agent Coulson introduces as Ms. Potts. Her eyes go momentarily wide with recognition the moment she lays them on Steve, but her expression turns almost instantly into a polite smile. It takes Steve a bit longer to place her, but then he remembers seeing her name in the file as someone close to Tony Stark. He hadn’t quite been able to piece together what their relationship actually was. Meeting her now, Steve thinks he’ll like her if he ever spends more time around her. There is an air of capability about her that Steve has always appreciated in people. They don’t talk about the mission, as they are apparently just giving Ms. Potts a ride to the airport and she’s not part of it. Mostly there’s just general small talk, and Steve notes she’s very good at managing to talk about things without intruding. Only when the car stops to let her out, she hesitates and then says, “I hope you and Tony get along. He can be difficult, most likely will be, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have respect for others. Sometimes he just doesn’t know how to show it, or gets stuck within himself.”

***

He finds out fairly soon he’d been dead wrong about being surprised, and a part of him relishes it, the new things and challenges. The rest of him is still angry, and he knows it’s not a good place to be in when meeting new people he’ll presumably have to work with sooner rather than later. He just can’t do anything about it.

At this point he’s come to the conclusion that everything with SHIELD happens because of some ulterior motive, and that makes him a bit stiff greeting Agent Romanoff, as she is introduced (he notes the odd masculine form of her surname, having become at least passably familiar with Russian customs during the war, but doesn’t ask). He feels more connected towards Doctor Banner, because they are both outsiders here on SHIELD carrier. There’s also the fact that the reason for Banner’s accident was trying to recreate the serum makes them two sides of a same coin in a way. He keeps an eye on this man that’s clearly very uncomfortable in his skin, although Steve thinks it’s got a lot to do with the surroundings; sometimes when Banner concentrates on something he seems to forget being cautious and uncomfortable, and then the man with authority, knowledge and kindness can be seen. It’s just that something went wrong for him in a freak accident, and Steve would feel sorry for him except he doesn’t think it would be appreciated.

He never much thought about all the ways things could have gone wrong with Project Rebirth. There never was much point. At first he just wanted, probably stupidly so, to be a soldier, to do his part and it was the only way for him. That’s why the risks didn’t matter. And after, since nothing did go wrong, he didn’t waste time on worrying about might have beens that had gone from hypotheticals into nothing. It’s still sobering to see Banner, a reminder that he indeed was very lucky back then. It also reminds him that Bucky did worry about everything that could have gone wrong, even when they hadn’t. It had been clear to Steve, even if Bucky never talked about it that much, but there had been mostly subconscious unease towards Steve, that had taken a while to fade. It had gotten better, and then finally there had been that last night of leave in Paris.

Steve shoves the thoughts of Bucky and especially what happened in Paris to the back of his mind. They are not what he needs to be thinking, especially now, especially since they are forever gone, some of them lost almost before becoming anything more than a dream that proved very fragile. He’s almost grateful to the somewhat stilted conversation with Agent Coulson, and the call for action.

***

His new costume is, well, different. First of all he feels weird that it’s in a display case instead of on a shelf like all the other equipment, as if it’s a museum exhibit. And then it’s clear the inspiration is from the comics instead of his actual uniform (which SHIELD probably has since he’d been wearing it). Maybe they are playing with the image, making him look like the Captain America of their legends instead of the one on actual documentaries.

The costume is brighter and tighter than his old one, but not actually uncomfortable, which is pretty impressive considering he never tried it on during the process of making it. The material is lighter, but feels sturdy enough, and it’s definitely something new invented during the decades he slept. On all accounts he thinks it’s adequate, although there are a lot of little practical things he would have changed. The belt is there apparently just because it’s in the comics, as there are no supplies in the pouches. The gloves are too heavy and sturdy for his liking, they restrict the movement of his wrists and are less dexterous than the ones he used to have. Handling the shield the way he likes might not be as easy as it use to.

The suit is also lighter because he has a lot less weapons than he used to carry in the war, which is certainly due to the comics. Only his shield is provided (same as ever, although repainted and the leather straps have been changed, and he already knows those are going to chafe), and he thinks it’s rather funny that people seem to think it’s all he ever had, especially since they are combat professionals. He knows it looks good on propaganda to have a hero who only fights with a shield to protect, and while protecting was a big motivation for him, he still lived in a real world, fought a real war. Besides his shield he used to have guns and knives and grenades, pouches and pockets full of ammunition and medical supplies.

When he’s ready, he automatically goes to hang the shield on his back except there’s nothing to hold it up, because no one thought to build him a harness even though there are countless pictures of him carrying it on his back. Even on the comics. He clicks his tongue, irritated, before marching to the jet.

It’s probably the cold rage, or maybe just that he really doesn’t care that much anymore, but he doesn’t comment on his outfit, or ask for additional weapons. There’s part of him that thinks, _This is what you want me to be? Fine._ Another part realises it’s not really a good thing to do, but he still doesn’t speak up, and it gets drowned in everything else.

***

It’s clear to him from the start that they are in over their heads, but it’s not really something that deters him. After all, he just (from his point of view anyway) spent a year and a half constantly being in over his head with his team, and somehow they managed. To a degree anyway.

There is a man from fairy tales who believes himself a god, but doesn’t really differ from Red Skull in that. Except he’s a lot stronger. There’s Stark, who immediately turns out not to be a team player, and is apparently hell bent on trying to irritate Steve. It’s working too. And there’s another god from a fairytale, and of course he and Stark get into fight with each other. It all just feels so _childish_. Steve recognises his immediate reaction is to be just as childish as them, and that he probably shouldn’t but it’s all just piling up and he truly doesn’t know how they’ll be able to pull this off. That’s why his instruction to Thor to put the hammer down is down right a challenge, and not really the peace offering he could (and should) have made. He has read the files, on Stark, on Thor, and while he knows they have experience in battle, of some truly horrific things, he also knows they still don’t understand the true overwhelming hopelessness of war where you can spend months, years even, knowing you are ultimately losing even if you manage to win battles. They don’t know yet that war means that everyone loses, and it makes him stretch his already short supply of patience to its very limit and over it.

Still, somehow it works. The hit from Thor’s hammer is something else, even the vibranium can’t absorb it and they all get knocked down, but somehow all the fight gets knocked out of them as well, and they make it back to the helicarrier with Loki.

 

* * *

 

**Day Sixteen**

 

Steve finds out there’s another drawback to having lived in the 40’s and then taken an extended nap, besides people having formed an opinion about him based on misleading information. They also seem to think that anything he says has no value, don’t listen to him or just dismiss his words outright. And it’s true that he might not know about all the intricacies of the current world, but people are still people, and he did grow to be quite a good judge of character during the war time. He had to, to make sure he could do the job he wanted among all the political play. Doesn’t seem to matter though, because nobody seems interested in finding out what he’s good at.

And the cold rage is still there, and it keeps getting harder and harder to keep it down. He already knows it’ll all go to hell, probably sooner rather than later. And he’s right.

As much as it rankles him, he does agree with Stark that SHIELD is clearly hiding something. It’s about the only thing he agrees with Stark, who seems to have extended the deliberately trying to irritate people to Banner as well as Steve. At least Banner seems to be still working to find the Tesseract, and since there’s not much else to do, Steve decides to see for himself what he can find out.

And what he finds out brings the rage boiling over, but mixed with it is sadness, because here is a proof that even something started with good intentions can turn ugly. It’s all about end justifies the means, he knows the thinking, even had to sometimes justify his own actions with that line. But there should be limits, and this is crossing them.

He is furious, and not a little part of the fury is from seeing the same mask that the man they fought on the train wore. Now it’s here, packed for transportation along with the weapons, and he remember full well what HYDRA used the Tesseract for, and what it cost him.

On his way back to the lab he thinks of Peggy for a while, and the organisation she helped build, one that she led for decades. He knows what the Peggy he knew in the 40’s would have thought about using HYDRA weapons, and wonders if the Peggy now would see it differently, having lived through all the almost seven decades he was sleeping. Before the war he saw all too often how drastically desperation and poverty could change a person, to make them almost unknown. He figures war and constant tension could do the same and wonders if Peggy now is someone he’d barely recognize. The thought is brief, pushed away instantly. He doesn’t believe it. He could name a few people he thinks time and hardship might change, might make them compromise their principles, but not Peggy.

And then it gets worse; Banner is right, they are not a team but a time bomb, and then the helicarrier is attacked. Which, in the grand scheme of things, turns out not to be all bad. They are in shambles, it’s true. And Agent Coulson is dead, and Steve can’t help feeling cynical about Fury showing them the Captain America trading cards. He isn’t even sure what exactly Fury aims at, although clearly it is towards him, but if Fury is trying to make him feel guilty about it, it’s not working. He’s way past it, used up the last of it sixteen days earlier. He has none left. But it does spur them on, glues the ones that are left together, and now Steve feels like his head is clearer. There are things he wants to take up with SHIELD, but now is not the time. He wants to finish it, nothing else matters. He remembers saying as much to Peggy, less than two weeks ago.

So he goes and shakes Stark out of his apathy, and even if he can see Stark still doesn’t fully get him, it doesn’t matter anymore. Now they have a common goal, they are finally working towards the same direction.

While Stark works on his armor Steve goes to get Romanoff, and gets Barton thrown in the bargain. She trusts Barton is fine, and the instincts Steve honed sharp during the war tells him to trust her judgment. Besides, they need all the hands they can get that he can trust, and it doesn’t extend that far into SHIELD right now.

On the jet they don’t talk much, but he is starting to feel kinship with the two agents. They all share the fact that they are going into battle relying on their own strength and skill, even Steve enhanced is still vulnerable. And when he’d earlier thought that Thor and Stark probably don’t understand the true horror and cost of war, he thinks the two people in the jet with him do. They’ve seen it all and are still stepping up. That makes him trust them.

***

It’s the second time Steve sees the sky open up above him to a place like he never imagined, but this time no one is taken, just a horde of aliens comes through. And they are indeed in over their heads, but it doesn’t matter. All they can do is tackle every little bit they can.

Thor and Banner come back, and by some miracle they do make a team. It is sort of like with his Howling Commandos, a group of highly skilled people that can perform miracles if they are pointed towards the right direction. He’s not quite sure if it would work continuously, or if their clashing personalities would get in the way, but it doesn’t matter for right now it works.

And it is a little bit exhilarating, not to mention familiar, to be in a battle where probability of not coming out alive is huge, but being able to trust the people you fight with. And there is more than a little bit of awe that he feels, not only towards Thor and Hulk and their supernatural strength, but also to Stark and his engineering, Barton who never seems to miss with a bow and Romanoff who seems to just adapt to any given situation. It’s almost delight that he feels when she just matter of factly proposes for him to give her a boost to reach one of the aliens’ flying machines, and when she’s disappearing from the sight he thinks that if they all make it through, he’d love to work with her again. It’s the first time he is anticipating anything after waking up.

Things get worse, much worse for them, but somehow they end up winning. Later he thinks it’s a bit ironic that the act of sending a nuke by World Security Council, while deplorable, also helped them by instantly killing the aliens. Otherwise even with the portal closed, they still would have had a fight in their hands. But it’s okay he thinks, he’s seen it before in the war that things are never simple.

And he’s almost resigned to seeing another teammate die, even after Stark makes it through the portal. It’s just sixteen days later and again he must watch someone fall. Only this time it turns out okay in the end.

 

* * *

 

** Day Seventeen **

 

It’s another day, and he knows he hasn’t quite absorbed it all. After the fight was over he had simply crashed into bed in his quarters on the helicarrier, as he presumed everyone else had as well. Excluding Thor, who didn’t really seem tired at all. He wakes up at three in the morning, gets out of his uniform which he hadn’t bothered to do before sleep and takes a shower. He puts on his civilian clothes again, even though the locker in the room also contains a SHIELD uniform in his size. He isn’t quite ready yet to declare himself as part of SHIELD.

He finds Thor in the mess hall which is mostly empty, since the crew is sleeping except for the people in the night shift. They eat and watch the coverage from New York that runs on all channels. There are both direct images and reruns of earlier coverage, and predictably opinions on them range far and wide. It amuses Steve to listen to the speculation about the “new” Captain America. Thor is confused by it, and Steve remembers that he doesn’t know his history, and he ends up telling what happened to him. At first he is short about it, but ends up elaborating. It’s somehow easy to speak with Thor, and he realises it’s because Thor doesn’t have any expectations about him, only what they’ve experienced.

In the end he ends up telling about Bucky, not all of it but enough, and about how he had to watch him fall. In turn, Thor tells about Loki and what had happened before. Steve had seen the SHIELD files before everything happened, but there is a whole other context. And they share having to have watched an important person fall, and Steve knows it cut them both close, even with Thor having been betrayed by his brother beforehand. Steve knows it still would hurt. Earlier he had thought that Thor wasn’t really familiar with a prolonged desperation of war, and he’s right about it he thinks, but now he knows Thor is very familiar with another kind of desperation.

They end up discussing what will be done to Loki and the Tesseract, and Steve supports Thor’s opinion that they should be taken back to Asgard. Privately he thinks it might turn ugly yet, he isn’t sure if SHIELD is ready to let go of their prize. Luckily it doesn’t come to that, and Fury agrees that Thor can take them away.

It’s not really cathartic to watch the Tesseract disappear. He’s glad it’s gone from their world, because it is the source of most of the recent pain in his life. It still doesn’t change the fact that his life is in pieces, and that he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. But there are a few things at least that count as gain in this new century, and maybe they are enough.

***

Back in the apartment everything is quiet. He can still hear the noise from the street through the windows, the water pipes in the walls, his neighbours' voices through the floor. But it’s a noise without meaning, one he’s learned to shut out since his hearing got better with the serum. He takes off his jacket, and then takes out the old box that has his and Bucky’s things from before the war. It smells old but not damp, clearly someone has stored it with care. He rifles through the additional clothes, the personal items, his two sketchbooks, but leaves them all be. In the bottom he finds Bucky’s book, _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ , and takes it out to the table by the only comfortable chair in the apartment.

Before he starts  reading he rifles through the personnel files, finds Peggy’s and memorizes the phone number on it. This time he doesn’t hesitate to pick up the phone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously I shortened the timeframe as much as I could justify, CATFA is a bit dodgy about the timeframe, so I just went with it. Some of the moving of troops is probably rather swift considering the time period, but oh well...
> 
> I didn't go with the AoS suggestion that Steve spent some time at the cabin alone, because it just feels like it would be completely wrong thing for him (for the reasons Steve states in the text), and I can't believe SHIELD would go with that, even though I am of the opinion that their regard of Steve's psychological well-being is terrible in general. It doesn't really fit in the tight time frame anyway.
> 
> I feel like I'm forgetting what I wanted to say, if you want to talk about it, I'll answer any questions in the comments or in my [tumblr](http://stellahibernis.tumblr.com/) (feel free to come and talk about everything else there as well).


End file.
